FIRST EDITION IN FRENCH. La Chine is regarded as one of Kircher's most historically significant works. Kircher was a man of considerable learning and discrimination, which he brought to bear with considerable success on the sources he used for this work. Kircher drew on the work of the Jesuits in China including Johann Adam Schall, Bento de Goes, Martin Martini, Johann Grueber, Michael de Boym, and Heinrich Roth. The first edition (1667, in Latin) of this work included for the first time in print important accounts and documents relating to geography, botany, zoology, religion and language. Kircher's work was the first to include a vocabulary of Chinese and the first to include reproductions in the West of the Sanskrit alphabet and grammar. In the present edition both maps were re-engraved, as was the plate facing p. 184 (p. 168 in the Dutch edition, see previous lot).